Book Review — Inventory Management Explained: A Focus on Forecasting, Lot Sizing, Safety Stock, and Ordering Systems By David J. Piasecki

David J. Piasecki ’s Inventory Management Explained: A Focus on Forecasting, Lot Sizing, Safety Stock, and Ordering Systems starts from the premise that if you take the time to understand the key factors that have an impact on inventory management, you can become a good, even great inventory manager, regardless of whether you’re running a small, one-man business or the inventory management team of a big corporation. Replete with calculations and comprehensive in its coverage of inventory management control and planning, this book manages to explain in a little over 350 pages the fundamentals of the complicated science of inventory management, as well as to equip you with valuable inventory calculation tools for overcoming the major challenges of business inventory management.

Versatile and Useful

A useful read for both novices and professionals, Inventory Management Explained does a great job at presenting forecasting methods such as Adaptive Smoothing and Weighted Moving Average, Trend Adjustments, EOQ, comparing the Pull and Push Systems, and introducing stock analysis. One of the virtues of Inventory Management Explained is that it makes forecasting for small business understandable even for a business owner who hasn’t read anything about inventory management before. And while the book covers spreadsheet calculations that a small business inventory forecasting app may include as built-in tools, saving one the onerous task of manual calculations, the insight and the extensive knowledge this book provides makes it a good read for those who use such apps.

Adaptable

The flippant examples and remarks sprinkled through the book may seem a little out of keeping with the treatment of such a subject, but they do not affect the rigor or the practicality of the calculations, explanations, and tips this book amply offers. Inventory Management Explained doesn’t just highlight common inventory management problems and offers possible solutions to them: it provides the knowledge and the framework an inventory manager or business owner needs for making accurate forecasting for small business, as well as for maintaining the right stock levels and implementing a successful ordering system.

Best of all, the solutions the book provides are flexible enough to fit a wide range of businesses, from the small local donuts shop to the multi-store retail shop selling an assortment of items form different categories.